Fantastic ActiveE EVent!

22 ActiveEs showed up as well as 13 other electric vehicles!

Wow, what a day for electric vehicles in the Garden State! On Sunday, April 15th I hosted what started out as an ActiveE meet that turned into the largest electric vehicle meet ever in New Jersey.

During the MINI-E program I hosted four MINI-E meets at my restaurant. It was a great way to meet the other MINI-E Pioneers and talk about the program; the good as well as any difficulty we were having. Even though they were never official BMW events, BMW always sent a representative to listen to what we had to say and to our recommendations. So now that the ActiveE program has begun, I figured it was about time to get all of us driving these cars here in NY & NJ together to meet in person and swap stories.

That was the plan, but along the way we made some changes. I was talking to Micheal Thwaite about the event (Michael has an ActiveE and a Tesla) and he asked why don't we open it up to all electric cars. Since I was really focusing on bringing the ActiveE people together I hadn't really thought about it, but I really didn't have any objection to that, the more the merrier! So Michael and I started putting the word out that there was an electric car meet and all were invited.

We ended up getting a total of 35 EVs, which I believe is the largest gathering of electric vehicles ever in NJ, and at the very least, the most in recent history. There just haven't been enough EVs around to have a large meet like this. The breakdown was as follows: 22 BMW ActiveEs, 2 Tesla Roadsters, 3 Nissan LEAFs, 3 Chevy Volts, 2 Mitsubishi iMiEVs, 1 ZENN NEV, 1 plug in Prius and 1 converted pick up truck.

BMW had a film crew come and record short interviews of all of the ActiveE lessees that would agree to participate. They didn't say what they plan to do with the interviews but I'm sure we'll get to see it once they put it together.

Photo by Chris Monroe

The day went so well that we'll just have to do this again sometime in a few months or so. There were so many great aspects about the day. First, it was really fantastic to see so many people come out to see the cars. There were many curious onlookers that came by to see the cars and ask the EV drivers questions about them. Then there was the fact that we even could have a meet like this. Many of the people couldn't make the round trip on a single charge and needed to plug in to make it home. With the MINI-E meets, they could only use the one EVSE I had at the restaurant, meaning there was a line waiting to charge. Besides the two chargers I had set up for the meet, there are seven public chargers within two miles of my restaurant! We have the highest concentration of public chargers anywhere in the state on NJ, so Montclair is actually the best place to host an EV meet like this. At any given time there were always five or six cars charging. However the thing that brought the biggest smile to my face was talking to the other ActiveE drivers, the people that are new to electric drive. Most of them haven't even had the car for two months yet but they are hooked on driving electric! I heard them saying, "I'll never buy a gas car again!" and "I can't beleive how great this car is!" and "I hate driving my other gas car now." It's funny, with every new bunch of people exposed to electric drive, there is a very high percentage of them that get hooked on it. Once bitten by the EV bug you don't want ever want to go back to gas. It's one of the main reasons I believe this technology will win and be the dominant form of personal transportation. Not just because it's the "green" thing to do, not just because the operating expense is so much less, not just because they allow you to use domestic energy instead of foreign oil, but because people really enjoy and actually prefer the driving experience!